


The Gallifreyan Patient

by LibeiLan



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: M/M, Mental Illness, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-01-06 17:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibeiLan/pseuds/LibeiLan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the year that never was the Doctor took the Master back with him onto the TARDIS, but rehabilitating a man who needs to heal but doesn't always want to isn't going to be easy. (For Kerry)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

The Master couldn't sleep. He couldn't waste the few hours of peace he had before he was abandoned to the drums again, lying in bed with his ear pressed against the pale flesh of his companion's chest he concentrated on the continuous thump of his lover's double heartbeat. Louder than the drums which haunted him and stronger than the pain which had become part of his daily life the organic rhythm filed his mind. It was the only thing he ever wanted to hear and knowing that it would be over in a few short hours once would have been enough to bring tears to his tired eyes. At the edge of his consciousness he could feel the man dreaming beside him, but he didn't intrude, half afraid and half hoping that he would see himself there. Besides, he didn't want to risk upsetting the Doctor and being left alone again.

For the few hours a day that the Doctor lay with him here the Master felt like himself, not the version of himself who would kill a man just to hear him scream or to push away the urge to scream he was forced to live with because for the constant pounding in his skull but the man who the Doctor had wanted to save when he took him off the Valiant after he almost managed to die. The man he had known when they grew up together. The Master had tried so hard to be that man in the last few weeks but it was so hard to go back. Living a slave to the drums for almost a millennium he was left with scars and guilt and he spent most of his time trying to think clearly leaving little time for self improvement. He had his good days and on those days he would talk to the Doctor as they piloted the TARDIS together - unless of course the Doctor had one of his human companions on board, on those days it didn't matter how 'well behaved' he had been or how long he had gone without an 'episode', he was locked in his rooms and left at the mercy of the drums.

This was what the Doctor did. He allowed the Master a few hours of peace then left him alone and unable to cope again. The Master may have tortured and killed people to satisfy his blood-lust but he thought that it was the Doctor who was truly cruel, keeping a single man in his own personal hell but giving him a taste of heaven each day. But maybe he deserved to suffer like this, or maybe it was self inflicted and it was time for him to stand on his own two feet again. There's a saying that when you can't run you crawl, and when you can't crawl you find someone to carry you. But sometimes the person who carries you doesn't want to let go, and then your legs can't get strong again. Soon the Master would have to be stronger than ever because one day the Doctor would wake up and decide he didn't want him, or that he was better and didn't need to be taken care of anymore. One day he would find himself alone, so he reasoned that it was better to leave than to be the one who was left. Pressing a final kiss to his sleeping partner's lips he swung his legs off the side of the bed and making a quick stop at the wardrobe made his way through the console room and off the TARDIS.

"Take care of him old girl, make sure to get him where he needs to be, and not to where he wants to be" because I'm not strong enough to stay away if he finds me too soon.

Reposted in the big crazy procrastination rewrite 30/12/13


	2. Chapter 1

The Doctor hadn't slept in four days, It wasn't that he usually slept all that much and occasionally he did even go a day or two without his customary few hours but four days, four stressful and draining days was enough for him to be feeling the effects. It was however necessary at the moment, the Doctor had found himself with a patient, and one who had to be watched constantly. Since the master came on board the TARDIS a week before he had tried to kill the doctor twenty nine times and had almost crashed the TARDIS into various suns, several moons and half a dozen war zones. The doctor was almost ready to take the master back to earth and let Jack or Martha deal with him and if taking him back wouldn't be as bad as handing him over to UNIT and giving the humans a timelord to experiment on as little more than a laboratory sample then the doctor would do it in a heartbeat. If he could live with himself after abandoning the only remaining member of his species then he would do it, but he couldn't so he would have to live without sleep for a while longer instead. It had to get easier, it wasn't like it could get much worse.

It did. The doctor slumped against the wood of the Master's bedroom door and ran a hand across his tired face, he was so out of his depth. Martha had warned him but he had to try but he had no idea how to help the Master and his charge became more and more uncontrollable each day, his mental state was erratic; ranging from uncontrollable rage to childlike mischief which the Doctor remembered from their childhood but there were his darker moods too - when the TARDIS was quiet for brief periods and the quiet hum of the engine tried to lull the Doctor to sleep he could not enjoy the peace because it usually meant that he would soon find the master cowering in a dark alcove somewhere clutching his head as the drums became to much to bear. That was the thing that broke his hearts to see as no matter what he had become the Master had once been his friend and he was obviously in serious pain. The episodes also seemed to be lasting longer and longer and the Master who had at first been almost silent in his whimpering when whatever was in his head became too much soon escalated into screams.   
After another three days of the master's cycle of destruction and screaming the Doctor had had enough. He needed to sleep and taking a syringe from the infirmary he filled it with a sedative strong enough to knock out a timelord and dragged the unconscious Master to a room in the lower levels of the TARDIS, it was a bedroom that was rarely used but was far enough away from the Doctor's room that he wouldn’t be able to hear the master no matter how loud he was and though he knew he would later feel guilty for resorting to the drugs he had promised himself he wouldn't use right now all he could do was push himself off the door and to his own room where he collapsed onto his own bed and was immediately asleep.

Later that day the Doctor woke up feeling much better, he felt almost alarmed to find that he had slept for eleven hours and went into the console room rubbing sleep from his eyes to see what kind of havoc the Master had wreaked on his ship while he had been resting. The sedative will have worn off hours ago and he couldn't imagine that the Master would have reacted too well to being drugged without his consent. Surprisingly he entered the console room to find that nothing was amiss, all of the systems were as he left them and the TARDIS sang into his mind as he approached and checking the console he sound that she was holding the Master where the Doctor had left him by keeping that room out of sync with the rest of the ship. The Master would not be able to escape until the Doctor released him which he had been about to do when his phone rang, and this wasn't just any phone; it was the special phone that only prime minister's and Madonna had the number for. Crossing his fingers he reached for the handset  
“Please be madge please be madge...Oh prime minister, how are you today? Aliens have kidnapped the queen, I’ll be right with you” 

Like he so often did The Doctor managed to forget something very important in his hurry to go off and save the day and the Master was left waiting to be released, his fury only growing with each passing hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drugging mental patients because they're annoying you is bad. boo doctor boo to you.


	3. Chapter 2

The doctor strolled back onto the TARDIS feeling pretty pleased with himself, he had averted a crisis on 28th century earth and saved a woman who had been very grateful for his assistance. He threw his long coat onto the hanger near the door and started up the engines, leaving the TARDIS cruising in the vortex while he went to see how the Master was doing. He felt almost felt guilty for leaving the man here while he had been off saving the world until he remembered that that same man had been a pain in his backside for the last week, maybe it would show the Master that the entire universe did not revolve around him. He touched the console and moved to unlock the room the TARDIS was holding the other timelord in when he saw how she had kept him from escaping it, his hands flew over the controls while he reversed what she had done so it was safe to walk through the door and ran away down the half dozen hallways and staircases it took to reach his destination.

In his dark little room the Master waited, really there was nothing to do but wait for the Doctor to come back. He had no idea how long whatever the other man gave him had knocked him out for so he didn't really have any sense of how long he had been trapped here and in his irritation he had smashed the room's only lamp soon after waking so for a lack of anything to do he curled up on the bed waiting with only the drums and his increasingly dry throat to tell him the passing of time. Exhausted but resisting the pull of his heavy eyelids fearing that the Doctor would come back, find him sleeping and leave him here again. 

When eventually his stomach grew hungry enough to serve as a distraction and quieten the drums the hours seemed to pass even slower until finally the door opened and the Master was blinded but managed to make out the silhouette of the Doctor in the doorway. The other man was breathing heavily and tried the light switch only to find the evidence of the master's frustration and shook his head, reaching into his bigger on the inside trouser pockets he pulled out something the size of a marble, shook it roughly and three it into the air where it hovered and lit the room in a slightly blue-white light. His eyes were taking longer than usual to adjust to the new light so the Master rolled over on the bed and closed them, suddenly tireder than he had felt a few minutes earlier he decided that moving had not been his smartest move and he could barely do more than fall almost entirely face down after rolling a little too enthusiastically. From across the room the Doctor frowned – it was true that it could be another of the Master's tricks but still moved to help the other man into a seated position, what he had seen on the console screen having left him feeling too guilty not to check.. Their eyes made contact for a moment before the master's became glazed and he slumped back down again. The doctor caught him and took a good look at the man in his arms. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips dry and cracked and he was so pale that he was almost grey. Cursing the TARDIS for the first time in a very long time he scooped up the man on the bed with some difficulty and carried him to the kitchen, when he had seen that the TARDIS was keeping the Master's room out of sync to keep the other man from crossing the doorway he hadn't known how out of sync. He would have to do some calculations when he got back upstairs but he guessed that at least three hours passed in the Master's room for every one that passed outside of it and he had left the master in there for what couldn't have been less than a day. The man's condition was hardly surprising and as soon as he got him into the kitchen he put him down on a sofa which sat against the longer wall and brought him glass after glass of water and some of the leftover soup martha had made one time, one advantage of a TARDIS fridge was that things never went bad, he still had some scones of Sarah Jane's he was saving for a special occasion. Eventually the Master seemed to be done, The doctor took a blanket from the back of the sofa and watched as the man he saw supposed to be caring for and had half starved to death fell into a deep sleep, all but passing out now he didn't have to worry about missing the doctor or being locked in again.

In the weeks that followed man who had always been so loud was now silent, the doctor had half expected that once he had rested and eaten some more that the Master would scream at him for leaving him for so long but he hadn't even mentioned it, he hadn't mentioned much at all really besides the odd 'hmm' which the Doctor was having to accept as the man's answer for most questions. He had moved him from the room downstairs to a nicer one a few doors from the Doctor's own room, it was decorated in red, had a large open fireplace and floor to ceiling bookcases on one wall. The master didn't seem to care about the other furnishings but went straight for the large bed so after showing him the room the Doctor backed away to leave the man in peace. The first day the Doctor had left the door ajar behind him. It would mean that he would have to keep an eye on the Master to make sure that he didn't get up to any mischief but he didn't think that the other man would react well to being locked in again tonight. The Doctor did lock the door when he passed on his way to bed but by this point the Master was fast asleep.

After that day the TARDIS was much quieter, the Master no longer tried to kill the Doctor at every opportunity and every morning when the Doctor unlocked the door to the other man's bedroom he was showered, dressed and ready to spend the day with the doctor in the console room. Most of the time he just sat on the floor fiddling with different pieces of technology which would have the Doctor worried if he wasn't entirely sure that they were harmless, from what he could tell, the Master was building a type of transducer which converted time energy into sound, while the TARDIS flew through the vortex it would produce music. The project was frivolous but as long as it gave the Master something to do the doctor wasn't going to complain, also it would be nice to hear the vortex again, at the academy their class had built similar devices but the doctor had not been particularly interested in that particular subject so after Gallifrey burned so much of his people's technology was lost to him forever. The Master had been much more committed to his studies, almost to the point of being annoying and he still took pleasure in correcting the Doctor's Gallifreyan grammar, it was one of the few times the man still spoke and the Doctor took to infuriating the Master's somewhat pedantic nature by deliberately butchering his own language just to get a reaction out of his old friend. He always earned himself a scowl with this and when the Master didn't think he was looking, half a smirk so perhaps there was hope afterall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The TARDIS is definitely up to something, sneaky sneaky box up to her meddling...


	4. Chapter 3

Falling into a routine aboard the TARDIS the Master began to find his life a little easier. Routines and plans had always helped him to focus, on board the valiant he was never bored, he hadn't won the Earth easily but watching all of the pieces of his plan come together gave him the sense of order he craved. And if he still found himself bored, hands twitching on a dull say he could always screw one of the assistants Lucy hated or go and play with the freak. Without these distractions on the TARDIS and only the Doctor for company the Master kept his hands occupied with technological projects, useless things, lest they find themselves something else to do. The Doctor still remained an almost constant source of entertainment always electrocuting himself on bits of the TARDIS, flying the damned thing almost entirely wrong and leaving his things lying about the ship then cursing when he fell over them, though as annoying as he could be at times the proximity to another timelord, just being able to feel the Doctor's mind nearby was something immensely comforting and even though the master didn't like this new reliance on somebody else he accepted it, keeping companionable silence with the other man save for when he really couldn't hold in his laughter something the idiot did.

Yes the Master's day was planned and scheduled from the moment the Doctor unlocked his bedroom door in the morning until the key turned again in the lock after he was wished goodnight. For the first week in his new room the nights had been dull but otherwise bearable, something which changed on the ninth day when as the door to his bedroom closed the Master felt a great quiet surround him, the Doctor's presence gone from his mind and the distant sound of drumming forcing its way back to the front of his mind.  
Unused to having another timelord so close the Doctor had spent a week barely sleeping or waking after his dreams overlapped or were interrupted by those of the man in the next room, he hadn't thought that he was so out of practice at using telepathic blocks but when even his efforts before sleep failed and he spent another night trying not to listen in to the Master's dreams he had spent some time under the TARDIS console the next morning and set up shielding around each of their bedrooms giving them both what he was sure was much appreciated privacy and he would just have to work harder during the day deflecting the stray thoughts the Master projected towards him.  
Privacy gave the Doctor the sleep he needed but for the Master on that first night time seemed to stretch and twist until he felt sure he had been sat in the centre of his bed for days but the Doctor wouldn't leave him again would he? If the last time had been a mistake then he would surely know better than to put a room out of sync again. Six hours later the door reopened and an anxious and exhausted Master all but darted out of the room, for once still in his pyjamas to make breakfast before settling down on the kitchen sofa with the blankets he kept there for a nap.

The next night he tried to prepare himself, a covert scan of the TARDIS' internal records revealed it was just psychic shielding, nothing more sinister surrounding his rooms but even so the sudden solitude as the key turned in his door left the Master sure that he wouldn't be sleeping again that night. Instead sat with his back against the smooth wood of his door, turned off the light and screwed his eyes closed with his arms around his head to try to block out the crescendo building behind his eyes. The books on the shelves would never be enough of a distraction but after a few hours his own body provided a brief break in the drums and he was forced to pull himself up off the floor as his bladder screamed at him. Half asleep and unaccustomed tot he gloomy room he was half way across the room when he walked straight into the solid wood leg of his bed frame and pain exploded from his stubbed little toe to his mind giving the Master a sweet moment of clarity, swearing despite his relief at the pain in his foot the Master moved more carefully towards the bathroom where he switched on the light, relieved himself then got down onto the floor to retrieve something he had concealed under the bathroom cabinet.  
It was supposed to be his last means of defence, the Doctor had never noticed the loss of a small but sharp knife from the kitchen, the man really did have a death wish what would he have done if the Master had intended to sink it into him rather than as a last escape should he need it, the doctor had taken away his right to die once when he dragged him from the valiant, he wasn't going to do it again.  
He had little need for such dramatics now though, not with the promise that something as small as a stubbed toe could banish the drums for a moment. Choosing a spot was difficult, it shouldn't be somewhere that would visible during the day but had to be somewhere sensitive enough that he wouldn't need to go too deep, removing most of his clothes and contemplating the Master decided on a small area on the inside of his left thigh and sat on the counter next to the sink before carefully washing the blade, the water so hot that the initial burn when the blade touched his skin distracted him for a moment as he lay the blade flat against his flesh and hissed, a smile forming on his lips as he watched the skin go pink, an hour later once his mind was suitably quiet the Master re-washed his blade, secreted it away back into it's hiding place now wrapped in the cloth he had used to dab the small amounts of blood from his thigh and to press down on the wound when the pain faded. 

As he showered the cut on his leg stung a little but had already begun to heal, to be safe he sprayed on some of the can-o-plaster he had found in a cupboard which was likely years out of date but it would stop any blood seeping onto the jeans he was ready to change into for when the Doctor let him out for breakfast. A glance In the mirror as he heard movement behind the door revealed that he looked like utter shit but despite the dark smudges under his eyes he felt better than he had in days, he would grab a few hours sleep on the couch in the kitchen this afternoon while the Doctor piloted the TARDIS.  
“Master, are you cooking breakfast or shall I?” The Doctor's voice floated into the bathroom from the man's position at he entrance to his bedroom and the master shuddered at the memory of the last time the Doctor had been left in charge of breakfast: there had been banana pancakes with Marmite, as interesting as that had been the Master didn't think he wanted such an eccentric breakfast this morning so with one last look in the mirror threw on the grey tshirt he had chosen for the day and shouted out to the Doctor.  
“I'll be out now.”


	5. Hunger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the Doctor gets a peek into the Master's mind and the Master does not have a healthy outlet for his feelings, sorry it took to long to carry on editing this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: self harm at the end of the chapter, mind invasion,

**CHAPTER 4 - Hunger**

* * *

The two Timelords existed in relative peace together on board the TARDIS for the next few months, The Doctor had even begun to enjoy the company of the man he held prisoner. The Master was quieter than the Doctor had ever known him but when he sat on the console room floor fiddling with different devices he had the same look on his face that he did when they were at the academy together, it was amazing that the expression had survived through the regenerations while the Doctor found that his mannerisms and gestures were altered every time he changed. The Master had also proved himself to be an excellent cook even if he wouldn't tell the Doctor where he learned. After the Master had gone a week without poisoning the food or creating bombs out of cleaning products kept under the sink the Doctor was happy to leave him cooking while he saw to other things. This evening he had left the Master cooking a roast while he went to repair one of the TARDIS' circuits which had a loose connection. By eight o'clock he had been working for an hour and his stomach was rumbling, he decided to see how long it was until dinner would be ready.

The kitchen was filled with the smells of cooking which made the Doctor's mouth water but the Master was nowhere to be seen, he looked around and eventually noticed a lump under the blanket on the sofa at the back of the kitchen, the Master's dark hair stuck out in all directions and sleeping peacefully with his hands raised like a baby and his lips slightly parted he looked deceptively innocent. When the Doctor sat on the edge of the couch and put a hand on the Master's shoulder the man moved closer to him and he felt the sleeping man's mind brush against his own, he tried to block the thoughts and impressions that the Master was broadcasting but failed, he got the sense of several emotions, a hidden fear which seemed to contrast with the feelings of being safe he felt at the forefront of the Master's mind, then there were the more complex emotions; a hatred which burned though the Master's thoughts was linked to the fear he could feel there, then there was the cloud of confusion and uncertainty which gave way to a glimmer of hope. In all the time the Master had been on board the TARDIS the Doctor had not gone into his mind for fear that the Master might be able to take control once he was there but with the other man asleep he was able to look around unhindered and started to explore some of the things he found interesting. He could not see the cause of the Master's confusion but saw his own face in the images there often enough to know that it had something to do with him. The hope he had felt earlier was locked inside a room of the Master's mind which the Doctor could not enter, the Master had buried his hope so deep that there was no way that anybody else could ever dream of taking it from him. The Doctor paused at a door which looked like the door to the master's bathroom but it too was locked, from inside he felt serious physical pain followed by a feeling of mental calm and that worried him but his attention was diverted when another door appeared a few feet away from him, it was the door that the Master's dreams hid behind and while the Doctor wouldn't usually approve of the intrusion he couldn't resist a peek.

* * *

Opening the door he found himself at the entrance to the Master's bedroom, the only light in the room came from a lamp on the bedside table and what it illuminated had the Doctor scurrying out of the Master's mind and coming back to reality with a nasty headache. His sudden departure had also woken the Master and the man looked up at him with confused eyes. In the Master's dream the Doctor had seen something that would have been familiar if he hadn't been watching from the other side of the room, the two of them hadn't been intimite since they were little more than boys but it seemed that the Master still harboured those feelings even if the Doctor had forgotten them through their many years as enemies.

"I'm sorry, that was private I shouldn't have..." The Doctor found himself cut off by a pair of forceful lips on his own and he felt the Master's mind against his own again. This time there was no confusion, just a dark cloud of lust tinged with the fear of rejection. He found himself responding to the unexpected kiss and soon the two were breathless and flushed sat on the couch. The Master also seemed to be fully awake now and looked a little embarrassed that the Doctor had caught him dreaming about him, they hadn't been together in over five hundred years and the Doctor obviously wasn't interested in picking up where they left off or he would have tried something by now. To be honest the Master had no idea why his old feelings had resurfaced in the last few days, maybe his new-found dependence on the Doctor had reminded him of the extreme trust they had in each other at one point before he had betrayed it and destroyed any chance of a future they had. All he knew was that no matter how hard he tried it was becoming almost impossible to get the Doctor out of his dreams and now he had jeopardised the quiet friendship that had grown between them with the desires he had no control over.

They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes until the oven timer went off and the Master nearly broke his neck trying to get off the couch with his legs still tangled in the blanket.

"Hey" the Doctor caught him just before he hit the floor and helped him to his feet and for the second time in ten minutes they found themselves uncomfortably close to one another with the Doctor's arms around the Master from where he had pulled him up.

"I'd better.." the Master indicated the oven where dinner was now ready. The Doctor released the Master's waist and went to set the table. As delicious as the meal was neither of their minds was really on the food and for the first time since he had arrived on the TARDIS the Master closed his own bedroom door before the Doctor came to lock him in, needing to activate the psychic shielding before he could retrieve his knife from its hiding place behind a cabinet in the bathroom and use it to give himself some peace. The pain had become about more than silencing the drums that night, it was a way of pushing all of his emotions down, it was becoming more difficult though and he found that he needed more and more each time to get the same result. Tonight he sat naked on the floor of the shower with his blood painting the tiles around him crying in frustration that he couldn't wipe the Doctor from his thoughts. He looked at his arms and raised the blade to his wrist, so far he hadn't moved away from the spot on his leg he had been cutting since the first time but maybe it was time to start experimenting with somewhere else. He still had at least an hour until the Doctor woke up and perhaps two until he came to open the door. Safe in the knowledge that he was not about to be caught the Master made a long cut from his wrist to the inside of his elbow and after the initial flash of pain relaxed into the numbness of blood loss. It wasn't until he started to feel cold despite the hot water of the shower that he realised that he was in trouble, but by this point he was unable to make any move to help himself.

 


	6. Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Master is in trouble and the Doctor realises he may have bitten off more than he can chew as a caregiver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Self harm, unintentional suicide attempt,

When the Doctor unlocked the Master's door he was met with silence and a dark room. Could the other man still be asleep? Unlikely, the Doctor knew that he didn't sleep at night but preferred to nap for an hour or two during the day instead. The bedroom was unusually warm and steam billowed out of the open bathroom door and towards the Doctor. To create enough steam to fill both rooms the shower would have to be running very hot for a very long time which would make the water scalding and unbearable to wash in.

"Master are you in there" He knocked on the open bathroom door but didn't look inside to give the other man a little bit of privacy. After a minute passed and he received no response the Doctor started to worry that the Master had escaped and left the shower running just to confuse him and buy himself a few minutes. As a quick check before he went to track down the Master the Doctor poked his head into the bathroom and was faced with the last thing he could have expected. The Master sat slumped on the floor of the shower with blood flowing slowly out of his arm. The Doctor reacted without any conscious thought and leaned into the shower cubicle to pick up his charge, not caring that the water burned on the back of his neck and his suit was getting soaked, carried him out to the bedroom and lay him down on the bed where he could figure out how to help him. The Doctor then took a step back and surveyed the damage that the Master had done to himself, there was a wound on his thigh which looked deep and was surrounded by scars - suggesting that this had been going on for a while. Then there was the more pressing issue, the long cut from wrist to elbow which blood still flowed from, though slower now that the Master had less blood in his body. He was deathly pale and the Doctor could barely find one pulse, never mind two. He didn't have a supply of timelord-compatible blood on board and by the time he got to somewhere that did have one it would be too late for the Master so as much as it pained him there was nothing the Doctor could do but hold the Master and wait for the inevitable.

* * *

The Master woke up on his bed and was confused, for as long as he had stayed in this room he had not slept on the bed so waking up here would be strange enough without the unidentified warmth on the bed next to him or the aching which seemed to take over his entire body. Speaking of his body why was he naked? The Master had a lot of questions but he wasn't going to get any answers until he moved. He sat up and looked down at the sleeping Doctor next to him.

" _Okay so I'm naked and in bed with the Doctor, not exactly complaining but why is he fully dressed"_

"I heard that you old perv" The Doctor had been waking up and had sought out the Master with his mind without even realising it, giving him a glimpse into the man's surface thoughts

"What happened? I don't remember falling asleep here"

The Doctor didn't really want to answer that, if the Master didn't remember the three painful days that it had taken him to regenerate in his weakened state then the Doctor wasn't about to remind him of it, he had never had to watch anyone regenerate before and it really did look as bad as it felt. The Master had held onto his old face but there had been some changes, namely his eyes had changed colour, from the brown they had been before to green and his hair was a much darker shade of brown, it was almost black now and had grown abut an inch so looked messy and honestly didn't suit him. The Doctor sat up as the man beside him got off the bed and walked into the bathroom, all thoughts of modesty forgotten as he left the bloodied blanket behind. The Doctor followed him and watched as the Master stared at himself in the mirror.

"You didn't change your face" They made eye contact in the mirror and the Master looked at him as if he was missing something obvious

"Why would I? But where did all that extra energy go? I had enough regeneration energy to change my entire body and it only altered the most minor aspects of my DNA."

"Are you kidding, do you have any idea how much energy is needed to create a full blood supply? I'm not pretending to understand why you'd so something as stupid as killing yourself but I'm willing to listen" The Master didn't respond or even look at him so the Doctor left him alone.

"I'll make you some tea, and you should really eat something but we  _are_  going to talk about this"

"Whatever" The Master had leaned close to the mirror to examine his new eyes and was paying no attention to the Doctor as he walked out of the room, since he had regenerated he seemed much more like the man had first come on board the TARDIS rather than the docile version of the Master he had been seeing lately and that worried him.

The Doctor couldn't understand why the Master would try to kill himself when he had been doing so well, inside the Master's mind when he had caught him sleeping on the couch he saw that the man wasn't as fine as he pretended to be, the pain that the Doctor had felt from behind the locked door must have been his memories of his self harm sessions but what the Doctor didn't understand was the relief mixed in with that pain, he stood in the kitchen making tea and toast waiting for the Master to give him some answers. When the Master didn't come to him he dropped off the food on the bedside table and went to the console room to park them somewhere safe for the time being. An hour later found him hovering outside the Master's bedroom door, the door wasn't closed completely and from what he could tell the man was sleeping. He would have preferred to not have to deal with the Master when he was cranky and half asleep but this couldn't wait so the Doctor was soon sat on the edge of the Master's bed trying to wake him,

"leave me 'lone" the Master waved his arms around wildly but the Doctor had expected this, it was exactly what the Master had always done when somebody tried to wake him up which is why the Doctor had come prepared;

"I brought cookies" That got his attention and he sat up, snatching the plate of cookies from the Doctor and putting two into his mouth, he chewed them for a second then made a face and spat the mess of biscuit all over the bed next to him.

"are you trying to fucking kill me? I hate cookies. No wait, I loved cookies. Damn regeneration screwing with my taste buds"

"sorry, I've got a banana if you want it?"

"I'll try it" The Master took a tentative bite out of the banana and discovered that they weren't as evil as he had previously claimed and the fruit was gone in thirty seconds flat, the skin tossed onto the plate of cookies.

"Ready to talk now?"

"Do I have to? it was an accident, it's not like I'm fucking suicidal or anything"

"And that's what I don't understand, you've obviously been mutilating yourself for weeks and I just don't understand why you'd need to do something like that. I thought that I'd been helping you but obviously it's not enough."

"So what? You're going to start hiding the pointy objects now? Because if I'm not allowed to cook any more then you're going to have to get someone in who isn't trying to fucking poison me. I'm not eating the crap you call food." The Doctor frowned, he had thought that the Master would be expecting what was coming next but it seemed that the man was happy for them to fall back into their normal routine even though it was obvious that the Doctor hadn't really been helping him.

"I've just got off the phone with the brotherhood of Mon"

"That awful pop group from the 70s?"

"not man, Mon. As in the order of Mon, the mute monks who run the sanctuary on Poosh"

"What about them? we haven't got to go save them have we? They're so  _boring,_  we'd be doing the universe a favour if we let whoever is trying to blow them up just bloody do it and I swear if they try to...no" The Master had just realised what the Doctor was about to propose "you are not leaving me on that bloody moon with those bloody monks"

"they're not bloody monks they're good people who want to try and help you"

"They will be bloody monks by the time I'm through with them"

"See, this is exactly why you need to go! I don't know how to help you any more" The Doctor got off the bed and left the room, listening outside the door for a minute as the Master got up and started smashing things, only going up to the console room when the Master yelled for him to fuck off and threw something at the door. He had really thought that the Master was doing better but obviously he had overestimated his own abilities as a carer. The Master was volatile and maybe the peace of the Mon sanctuary would help him to deal with the issues that the Doctor had failed to address.


End file.
